


Playa de Ereaga

by luxover



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-11
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 14:44:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/456668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxover/pseuds/luxover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Javi watches Fernando, sometimes. He doesn’t realize it at first—doesn’t realize it for a long time—but when he does, it’s all he can think about. Is it weird? It’s probably weird, he thinks. Or, well, maybe not; Fernando’s his best friend and a great footballer and Javi doesn’t—doesn’t <em>mean</em> anything by it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playa de Ereaga

Javi watches Fernando, sometimes. He doesn’t realize it at first—doesn’t realize it for a long time—but when he does, it’s all he can think about. Is it weird? It’s probably weird, he thinks. Or, well, maybe not; Fernando’s his best friend and a great footballer and Javi doesn’t—doesn’t _mean_ anything by it. It’s just that he admires Fernando and the way he plays, and he wants to emulate that. But who wouldn’t, right?

Gorka laughs at him over it, too. He’ll stand there by the goalposts and fix the straps on his gloves, and he’ll say things like, “Let me know when it’s a commercial break, okay? I have something to show you,” and, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it was impolite to stare?”

Javi doesn’t mind, not especially, even though he always tells Gorka off afterwards, because Gorka keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t tell the rest of the guys that maybe Javi watches Fernando a little bit more than he should. Javi can’t help it, maybe, but he really doesn’t mean anything by it. Fernando is his friend—his best friend—and his teammate and his confidante and his _Halo: Reach_ guru, but that’s it, that’s all he’s ever been to Javi, nothing more.

 

They go to Playa de Ereaga one Friday after practice. Fernando drives and Javi rolls down his window, smells the salt in the air and feels the wind on his cheeks. Neither of them showered after practice and Javi’s okay with that; he likes the feel of dried sweat on his skin.

He looks at Fernando as they get closer and Fernando is watching him out of the corner of his eyes.

“What?” Javi says, and Fernando just smiles and shakes his head. “Alright, but I’m watching you,” Javi says, because the only times Fernando looks at him like that is when he’s about to flick a football up into Javi’s face for fun.

“It’s nothing!” Fernando says, and Javi laughs because he’s not an idiot, he’s not buying that.

When they get out of the car, the first thing Javi does is take of his shirt and tie it around his head like a turban, or like Ramos does when he gets out of the shower after national team call-ups. 

“That looks ridiculous,” Fernando says, but Javi knows he’s really just jealous.

“It’s not hard,” he says. “Just flip your head over, twist the ends, and then toss them back when you stand up.”

Fernando laughs at that one, really laughs, and says, “No, thanks.”

“Your loss,” Javi shrugs. He shoves Fernando so that he loses his footing and takes off running, shouting, “Race you to the water!”

And he’s fast—Javi knows he’s fast, works his ass off in practice every day to stay fast—but he’s not all that fast on sand and he has to use one hand to awkwardly hold his turban to his head, and Fernando is right behind him before he knows it.

“Never!” Javi yells, but he doesn’t look back. Fernando yanks at the waistband of his shorts and Javi stumbles, trips over his own feet until he’s lying face down in the sand. He doesn’t see it, but he can feel Fernando’s foot catch on one of his sprawled out legs right before Fernando lands in the sand next to him.

“Real smooth,” Fernando says, and there’s laughter in his voice.

“Hey,” Javi says, “ _you_ tripped _me._ ”

He looks at Fernando then, and his face is real close; Javi can see his own reflection in Fernando’s eyes, can see the sand that’s in Fernando’s hair and on his face. And suddenly—suddenly he doesn’t want to do anything more than kiss Fernando—kiss his best friend—and that’s—he’s not supposed to feel that way about someone that’s been there for him and with him since the beginning.

Only then, he thinks—maybe he is, maybe he’s _supposed_ to feel that way about his best friend; maybe there’s no one else he _should_ feel that way about. Because yeah, there’s tons of things about Fernando that Javi likes and admires, like the way he plays football and wins at videogames, and his defined abs that Javi can never seem to replicate and the way he looks, even after waking up in Javi’s living room with couch creases on his face, but there are things that Javi hates, too, like the way Fernando eats his pizza with a fork and knife, and how he never says what he’s thinking and so Javi has to just guess, and how when Fernando talks about politics sometimes, he talks like Javi doesn’t understand any of it. But at the end of the day, even with all the bad things, the good things are still more important and more in number and Javi wonders if Fernando’s skin would still taste like sweat now, an hour after practice, or if it would taste like something completely different.

And it’s just—he never even thought of Fernando like this before—never thought of him sexually before, it never even occurred to him that he _could,_ and now that he has he doesn’t think he can go back. Because why wouldn’t you want to have sex with your best friend? No one looks good when they’re coming, Javi knows, so why not come with your best friend, the one person who doesn’t care what you look like?

And he thinks—he thinks he’s going to say all of this to Fernando, because Fernando’s who he tells everything to, but then Fernando says, “Hey, Javi?”

“Yeah?” Javi says.

“I win.”

And Javi doesn’t know what that means, not at all, not until he sits up and sees how close to the water they actually are, not until he sees a small wave wash up on shore, running over Fernando’s feet and legs before pulling away, back to the ocean.

“Man,” Javi says. “I was close.”

“Next time,” Fernando says. “Your turban fell off.”

Javi gets up and brushes the sand off of his shorts, picks up his t-shirt and wraps it around his head again. Fernando laughs at him as he stands up, too.

“Jealousy is very unbecoming on you, Fer,” Javi says.

“Yeah,” Fernando agrees, and he reaches out, grabs Javi’s wrist. His hand is wet and the sand on his fingers is coarse and rough against Javi’s skin. “Are we on the same page?”

“I don’t know,” Javi says. “What page are you on?”

Fernando laughs again and something flares up in Javi’s chest, something like pride over the fact that he can make Fernando laugh, even though Fernando’s easy and everyone can make him laugh.

“I don’t know,” Fernando says, and then he leans in, kisses Javi right there on the empty beach, and Javi kisses back—kisses his best friend—and it’s better than Javi ever could have imagined, only he didn’t imagine it at all and he doesn’t know why.

Fernando pulls back and looks at Javi, looks at Javi like maybe Javi’s going to be mad at him or something, but Javi’s not, not at all, and he waits for Fernando to say something. Fernando doesn’t say anything, though, and Javi doesn’t say anything, and Javi thinks that maybe he _should_ say something, maybe he’s the one who’s supposed to talk first, and he hates the fact that he doesn’t know what to say.

“Yes,” is what he settles on. “Yes, I am on that page.”

Fernando laughs again—all the time, always laughing when they’re not playing a match—and grabs the shirt-turban off of Javi’s head. He runs with it into the water, high knees and awkward arms, and Javi thinks he looks ridiculous. He doesn’t say that, though. Instead, he says, “Surrender now, or prepare to die!” and races in after him with even higher knees, his arms flailing as the cold water hits his skin.


End file.
